Helen Shiyang Lu's Personal Website

Hello! I am a Killam Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Audiology and Speech Sciences at the University of British Columbia. I work in the Language and Development Lab and the Infant Studies Centre under the guidance of Dr. Alexis Black and Dr. Janet Werker.

Prior to joining UBC, I completed my PhD in Developmental Psychology at the University of Southern California, where I worked in the the USC Language Development Lab under the guidance of Dr. Toby Mintz. Before then, I was an undergraduate student studying Psychology and Linguistics at University of California, Los Angeles.

My research focuses on the cognitive mechanisms involved in language learning, including how individuals detect patterns and segment words using statistical learning—a process where learners pick up on regularities in their environment to understand language structure. I’m particularly interested in how multilingualism and various language experiences influence these learning processes. You can read more about my past and current projects on the research page.

I was born and raised in Shenzhen, China, and I adopted two cats, Ephesus and FatChoy (photos here).